


A Brother's Weight

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, twinganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 15:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16976970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: Ryou Shirogane has some introspection about one of the differences between him and his twin.  Takes place in the twinganes verse after Two Minutes and I See A Mirror.  Almost a headcanon but too organized for it.





	A Brother's Weight

“Of course, I’m not happy about what I did.”  Ryou finally paused, went still, wrench in his hand, grease on his elbow all the way down to his entirely encased oil black hand.  After a minute he exhaled, shook his head like a horse shaking off a fly and frowned.  “It just doesn’t - cripple me.  Not like it does Taka.”  He winced a little as he said it, frowned deeper and leaned back in, half obscured by the engine again.

He didn’t take back what he’d said however.  After a minute of silence he tried again.

“Look.  I’m not Taka.  I never have been.  We’re alike in a lot of ways but I”m - not… noble.”  The visible shoulder moved, rolled forward, muscle shifting under the tattoo and the frown stayed in his voice, coming from the gut of the machine.  “I’m a good person.  I like to think I used to be at least. But - Taka’s more than that.  He’s better than that.  I don’t mind.  I admire him, love him, for it but - he’s better.  Inside.  In the core of him.  He’s - clear.  I’m not bad.  I’m just not - clear the way he is.”  He hadn’t come out of the machine he was half choked down by - but no muscles were moving on his back to show he was actually working on anything in it either.

“Taka has always held himself to a higher standard.  Everyone else has too.  I - don’t know if he started it or others did but - I’m not like that.  So I’m sorry I did what I did.  I wish I hadn’t.  But I wish I hadn’t because I wish I hadn’t needed to, not because I regret my actions once I was forced into it.  It fucked me up.  I still wake up a lot of the times with strange blood in my mouth, with sewage and bile and broken organs in my nose, with screams and whimpers and crying in my ears.  Sometimes I don’t even have to be asleep for that.”  The shoulder rolled forward again, muscle under his tank top shifted as his hands moved where they were invisible from the world and coated in black tar.  

“But I don’t - it doesn’t tear at me the way it tears at Taka.  I can handle it.  Because I don’t feel sorry for surviving, even if it means I had to do it over someone else’s body.  I had to.  But Taka… Taka feels responsible for the deaths he caused, for the things he did.  Taka is noble.  He can feel the potential and promise in the lives he took.  He can still feel it.  He can hear their families.  He carries them like the Japanese boy in that picture - the old one.  After the atom bomb went off.  The one of the little boy carrying his baby brother on his back to the cremation center even though he was barefoot and hurt himself.  The one with the little dead brother on his back, that he was still trying to take somewhere he could be properly taken care of, even if, to the little brother, it didn’t matter anymore.  Because it still mattered.”

His voice dipped, went gruff.  And soft.

“Because it still matters to Taka.”

He went quite then for a long time.  Finally cleared his throat and inhaled through his nose.

“That’s why he has it worse.  He went through it longer, they did so much more terrible things to him than they did me, they took parts of his body and meshed on their nightmares so that he couldn’t leave even that behind.  He torments himself all the time worrying about what he can’t remember.  But - even beyond that - he’s still carrying the dead bodies.  I left mine behind when they fell.  But Taka - its all of them.  A year’s worth of them.  And he’s still looking for somewhere safe for them.  Because, even if it doesn’t matter to them and they’re dead - he’s too clear inside.  And he knows it still matters.”

_[@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ) if you want to see Ryou’s tattoo.  _


End file.
